This study investigates university ranking and their perceived usefulness for organizational transformation in developing countries. The rationale of this study is that it has helped to uphold standards, policy implementation, and maintain quality assurance in teaching, learning, research, and community development. Findings reveal that certain factors were perceived useful to university ranking in developing countries. Adequate facilities for enhancing work performance among academic staff proportionate to their qualifications of doctorate, masters and bachelor's ratio; and students' ratio (a large number of undergraduates and postgraduates); and institutional income that caters for funding programs and activities; research, which faculty members/postgraduate students are deeply involved and willing to promote its growth and visibility; and citation impact, its influence within the institution and research output/productivity based on funds allocated/available to the institution through external bodies to support research.
TopIntroduction And Background Of The Study
University Ranking Systems are not a new phenomenon globally, especially in higher education institutions, although still in their infancy in some developing countries. University ranking (UR) has become an indispensable tool in the present-day information and knowledge economy, where higher education institutions (HEIs) are positioned as the citadel of knowledge production for organization and economic growth. University ranking is an avenue through which the quality-of-service delivery that surrounds teaching, learning, research, community engagement, and academic citizenship among other practices are measured across the world. Without the ranking of universities, many institutions would become docile, not performing, or meeting the expectation as compared to other institutions irrespective of their geographical location based on the standard of why they were established. The understanding that surrounds university ranking as stated by Aguillo, Bar-Ilan, Levene, and Ortega (2010) is that it is used for accountability and criteria for service delivery based on the standards which the public or citizens expect the university to portray. One such strategy through which the university is measured is the use of organisational information cards (Gormley, 1999). This is used for decision-making and planning by policymakers based on value and the high cost of service delivery (Gormley, 1999). In order words, the ranking of university become significant due to tactical preparation and improvement of institutional precision that could stimulate the excellence of culture maintained in education settling (Berbegal-Mirabent & Ribeiro-Soriano, 2015).
International rankings are believed to have originated in the United States, where a specific “ranking culture” has developed in many areas of social and economic life (Melcer, 2017 cited by Sulkowski, Wozniak, and Seliga, 2020). In general, university rankings base metrics and weights on indicators of teaching, quality of teaching staff, research and strength of graduates in various degrees based on their relevance to higher education (The Education Collaborative, 2029). The classification systems are of two types, the global ranking of universities such as Time Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), and Webometrics, while the second ranking system is the ranking of national universities, such as the Nigerian National University Commission (NUC), the Pakistan Higher Education Commission and the Kenya University Education Commission. Çakır, Acartürk, Alaşehir, and Çilingir (2015) stated that national rankings tend to include more indicators that focus primarily on educational and institutional parameters, while global ranking systems tend to have fewer indicators that focus primarily on search performance. In like manner, Kehm and Stensaker (2009) referred to diversities associated with the landscape of ranking in a higher education institution. It becomes inevitable to state that the impact of university ranking is unquantifiable in any context and content (Hazelkorn & Ryan (2013).